A gleefully intense psychodrama told through dance, cue cards, green-screen illusions, and computer-generated rendering of an interior dysmorphia, Live Nude Dancing, a collaboration between photographer Daniel Trese, choreographer Ryan Heffington, and animator Johnny Woods, is a sneering dare to get in the ring and move your body. Based on a piece from Heffington’s critically acclaimed KTCHN, a performance installation inspired by the garish, emotionally aloof characters which populate the paintings of Nolan Hendrickson, here a dancer in Ronald McDonald-inspired drag inhabits a referee’s black and white jersey and seduces a cuckolding audience with gyrations and nimble sashaying. Convulsing in the ecstatic throes under the spotlight, the protagonist becomes exhausted by the insistence of the public eye, and in desperation clings to his nimbus of fame by performing at the feet of villains who rain streams of cash on this victim of desire. Like KTCHN, Live Nude Dancing borrows formal elements of dance, fashion, punk, performance art and social sculpture in order to explore a fascinating intersection of celebrity culture, a binary of public-versus-private image, and new elements of drag and queer culture. Heffington, who designed public dance events and environments for the re-launch of the Engagement Party of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2010, challenges viewers to dance and express themselves not to propagate relations of power, but to transcend them.

GREEDY BOY original music written and performed by Alex Black.